Directi Group (see disclosure) announced today that is has applied for 31 top level domain names through its new company Radix. I believe this makes it one of the biggest “portfolio” applicants for new TLDs.

The company has committed over $30 million to the new top level domain business.

In a press release, Directi co-founder Bhavin Turakhia said:

Today’s internet addresses are uncategorized and say nothing about the website. In addition, it is near impossible to find available names that are short and memorable. Our research shows that over 65% of users are unable to find a name of their choice. We welcome the opportunity to usher in an era where internet addresses distinguish a plumber from a lawyer and domain names with hyphens are a thing of the past.

[Disclosure: I work with Directi's online advertising businesses including Media.net. I have not been involved in the company's new top level domain program and just today became aware of the strings the company is applying for.]

Bloomberg UTV has dedicated an entire 30 minute segment to profiling domain name company Directi and its founder Divyank Turakhia.

The segment features Turakhia and how he started Directi in his teens. The company went on to build some recognizable brands in the domain space, from registrar accreditation consulting company Logic Boxes to domain parking business Skenzo, not to mention one of the ten biggest domain name registrars in the world.

Directi now employees about 600 people, and Turakhia shares one of his biggest challenges scaling the business: people. That’s why his company (and he personally) spends so much time on human resources.

The video gives an inside look at Directi and Turakhia, including the many toys he plays with when he’s not sitting in front of his computer.

A familiar face in the domain name world is joining Directi’s DomainAdvertising.com as CEO.

Dan Warner, previously the Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Operation Officer of Dark Blue Sea, the company that runs Fabulous, has joined the company and already hit the ground running.

Warner explained how the company plans to shake up the domain industry:

We will be doing the exact opposite of most domain companies. Significant capital, human resources and infrastructure will be used to accelerate internet advertising innovation and design. We expect that many of the other players in the industry will look like they are standing still or going backwards in comparison to our scheduled advancements.

DomainAdvertising was launched at the most recent TRAFFIC conference in New York City.

Warner will lead an initial team of 30 people at DomainAdvertising.com, but will also have access to Directi’s 500 person employee base.

Every once in a while you see a new product hit the domain name market that you really want to see succeed. DomainAdvertising.com from Directi is one of those.

DomainAdvertising.com has the potential to bring more advertising dollars to the domain traffic market. It is the first service I know of that will evangelize the value of domain traffic to advertisers. We all know that we can’t count on Google and Yahoo to do that.

The company offers a high touch service for advertisers to help them maximize the value they can get from the domain channel. That includes buying parked domain clicks from existing networks and directly from domain owners, leasing domain traffic, and buying domain redirects.

So what does that mean for domainers? I asked Alap Ghosh, VP – Strategy and Business Development, to break it down:

We’re a traffic monetization program for domain owners. They will park their domains with us and we will then use our advertising network relationships to maximize the revenue earned on traffic from the domains. The traffic will be sold in different inventory models and using different media formats, optimized for the traffic that we receive. We will also selectively bring services like domain leasing and domain brokering among others. Our focus is to directly evangelize the domain medium to advertisers and help them buy traffic. We believe that of all the online advertising mediums available today, domains bring the best return on ad investments. Advertisers, in turn, have given us a great response and we already have over 120 networks joined up.